Retribution (15 page)

“I need another flashlight,” Danny said.

He took a breath, then pushed back close to the weapon. One of the sailors was already shining a beam on the wires; it just didn’t seem bright enough.

Danny felt as if someone was squeezing his neck.

“Here you go,” said the Navy expert, turning on another flashlight.

He located the first wire, nudging it gently from the rest of the pack, picked up the pliers with his right hand, pushed the nose toward the wire, then backed off and switched hands.

“How’s it going?” asked Lieutenant Dancer from behind him.

Her voice steeled his fingers and he began cutting, working methodically. Klondike had him move on to the fusing unit.

“What we think is the fusing unit,” she said, amending her instructions as she told him how to remove it.

He could have done without the note of uncertainty in the description, but when he was done, the scientists decided that the bomb was safe enough to move.

Which presented them with the next problem—they wanted time to study it before bringing it aboard the
Lincoln
.

“Why?” asked Danny.

“Just in case it blows up,” said Klondike dryly.

“So it’s all right to blow us up,” Dancer said sarcastically, “but not the squids.”

“Probably more worried about their delicate airplanes,” said one of her sergeants.

“Well, I’m all for getting the hell out of here,” Danny told them. “Given that the Pakistanis are two miles away.”

“We’ll just keep the weapons with us at P-1 for the time being,” said Dancer, “since we’re setting up camp there anyway.”

Meanwhile, a harness and a set of titanium rods were dug into place under the warhead. A pair of hydraulic jacks with balloon-style wheels lifted the rods up so the warhead could be set into another jack and gingerly rolled over to the Osprey. It took considerable grunt work, but within a half hour the nuclear weapon was being rolled up into the aircraft’s hold, where it was set into a veritable nest of inflatable stretchers and strapped to the walls so it couldn’t move. Danny, one of the Navy bomb people, and two Marine riflemen sat in the rear of the aircraft with the weapon; everyone else flew in the other two rototilts.

“This’ll be a story to tell our grandkids, huh?” said the Navy expert as the Osprey revved its engines.

“If it’s declassified by then,” replied Danny.

Aboard the
Bennett,
near the Pakistan-India border
1215

“P
OSITIVE
ID
ON THE LAST OF THE
P
AKISTANI WARHEADS,”
Major Catsman told Colonel Bastian.

“Good,” said Dog. He glanced at Sergeant Daly, sitting next to him. The radar operator’s eyes had narrowed to slits, his brows sagging toward the puffy skin below. “I think we’re about to call it a day here.”

“When was the last time you slept?” Catsman asked.

Dog changed the subject, going over the arrangements Catsman had made for handling communications with the U-2s and Marines recovering the nukes on the ground. Then he checked in with Danny, who was helping set up the warhead recovery base in a hilly section of the desert between India and Pakistan. So far, four Indian and two Pakistani warheads had been recovered, all without incident.

“Any word on Major and Captain Stockard?” asked Dog, trying to sound as unemotional as possible.

“Negative.”

“Alert me if there are any new developments,” he told Catsman. “I’ll check back with you when we land at Diego Garcia.”

“Roger that. Get some rest.”

“I will, Major. Thanks for the advice.”

Base Camp One,
Great Indian Desert
1800

B
Y THE TIME
D
ANNY
F
REAH HAD A CHANCE TO STOP AND
catch his breath, night had begun stealing into the rugged hills around him, casting long shadows over the temporary camp the Marines had hastily erected. Over fifty Marines guarded the perimeter, with additional sentries located to the north and south and a Marine Pioneer unmanned aerial vehicle orbiting overhead to provide constant surveillance. Flights of F/A-18s from the
Lincoln
were being rotated north to provide air support if any was needed.

For the moment, things were quiet, and neither the Indians nor the Pakistanis seemed to know they were there. The closest Indian troops were border patrol units nearly two hundred miles to the south.

Admiral Woods had decided that the warheads would be transferred to the USS
Poughkeepsie
. Laid down in the 1960s and designated as an LSD or “landing ship dock,” the
Poughkeepsie
had a long helicopter deck and could accommodate over two thousand tons of cargo, the ostensible reason for its selection—though the Navy experts told Danny the ship was so old no one in the Navy would care if the nukes took her down, unlike the
Abe
.

The
Poughkeepsie
, en route from maneuvers off Africa, was not expected to be in range for more than twenty-four hours. By then, it was hoped, all of the warheads would be recovered and the Marines ready to end their operations.

Danny ambled down the narrow path to the tent area, the fatigue of the long day slowing every step. It was a good kind of tired, he thought, the kind that came from a tough but successful mission. On the other hand, tired was tired.

Dancer met him as the trail gave way to the narrow plain where the Marines had established their command area.

“You look like you could use a good home-cooked meal,” she told him.

“If you’re cooking, I’m eating.”

“This way.”

Danny tried thinking about his wife Jemma. But she was far away, and they hadn’t been getting along too well anyway, and—and Dancer was right in front of him, just begging to be touched.

Somehow he managed to keep his hands to himself as she led him into the mess tent.

“Pot roast,” said Dancer. “Just like mom used to make. Of course, my mom was in the Army.”

She pointed at a tray of squished plastic packages containing vacuum-sealed meat and gravy—a Meals Ready to Eat version of pot roast.

“I thought you were cooking,” Danny said, laughing.

“Oh, I am,” said Dancer. She picked up one of the packages and dropped it into a tray of simmering water nearby.

“Lieutenant, I’m surprised at you,” he said, grabbed a set of tongs and fished the package out of the water. “That’s going to give it that plasticky taste. Come on. Let me show you how it’s supposed to be done.”

He picked up two of the packages and four metal plates, then went outside.

“Most important thing you have to do,” he told Dancer as he walked away from the tents, “is find the proper location.”

Danny picked a spot with a scattering of small and medium-sized rocks. He squatted down and quickly created a miniature fireplace. He made covered casserole dishes by covering a plate’s worth of food with another plate and placing them over the hearth, securing the tops with small stones.

“You forgot the charcoal,” said Dancer.

Danny smiled and took a pencil flare from his tac vest.

“No,” said Dancer.

“Learned this in high school,” he told her. He lit the flare, then set it under the pans. He arranged the rocks to help channel the heat to the food. “I was with the local ambulance squad. We used to do this when we were on standby at football games.”

“You seem more like you would have been playing football than waiting for someone to get hurt.”

“Couldn’t play football that year,” said Danny. “Bad knee. That’s why I became an EMT.”

“How can you parachute if you have bad knees?”

“That was my junior year. They got better.”

Danny had gone on to play—and star—as quarterback the next year, and even played in college, albeit for a Division III school. But he didn’t mention this to Dancer; it would sound too much like bragging.

The food had already been cooked before it was packaged, and long before the flare died out, the scent of warm meat and gravy filled the air.

“Only thing we need now is wine,” he said, pulling the pans off the fire.

“Wait!” said Dancer. She turned and trotted to the mess tent.

Now he did think of Jemma—how mad she would be if
she saw him at that moment, ready to jump Dancer’s bones.

If she loved him so much, why wouldn’t she give up her job in New York, or at least spend more time visiting him at Dreamland?

And why didn’t Jemma want kids? She wouldn’t even talk about it anymore.

“Here we go,” said Dancer, returning. “Best I could do.”

She held up two boxes of grape juice.

“From the north side of the vineyard, I hope,” said Danny.

“Nineteen ninety-eight was a very good year for concord grapes.” Dancer tossed him a box. “The vintage has aged especially well since it’s been boxed.”

Danny laughed.

“This is good. Hot, but good,” said Dancer. “The flare definitely adds something.”

Before he could think of a witty reply, a sergeant approached and told them the
Lincoln
wanted to know what sort of supplies they’d need for the night.

“As much as we can get,” said Dancer, getting up. “Let me go talk to them. Hate to eat and run, Captain.”

Danny watched her go, unsure whether he was glad or sorry that they had been interrupted.

An atoll off the Indian coast
Date and time unknown

Z
EN’S ISLAND WAS SHAPED LIKE THE SOLE OF A SHOE
. H
E AND
Breanna had come ashore near the toe. Roughly fifty yards wide, it was crowned by a large bald rock. It was cracked and pitted severely, but porous enough that the rain that fell soon after he arrived had drained away from the narrow holes./

The rock was the high point of the island, about twelve feet above sea level. Perched atop it, Zen could see more land in the distance to the east. Whether this was another island or part of the mainland, he couldn’t tell. Nor was he sure how far off it was. He guessed it was four or five miles, though it
might just as well have been fifty since they were in no shape to swim it.

The heel of the atoll looked like a rock pile that had been disintegrating for decades, tumbling toward the middle of the island. It resembled a swamp, but one made of loose stone. Rocks parceled the saltwater into irregular cavities, none deeper than two feet.

Seeing some large pieces of wood on the northern shore, Zen began crawling toward them. By now his hands were covered with small scrapes and cuts. The grit on the rocks ate at his skin as he went, and he had to stop every few minutes to gather his strength and let the stinging subside.

The first piece of wood was too well wedged in the rocks for him to pull away, and he had to settle for some smaller pieces, sticks actually, that had landed nearby. He wedged them in his flight suit and crawled along the shoreline to a piece about as long as he was. There was another piece, thicker but shorter, beneath it. All of the wood was bleached white and appeared to have been there a long time.

The sun had begun to set. Zen decided it would be faster and easier for him to swim back. He dragged the wooden sticks with him but soon realized he couldn’t hold it and swim at the same time. Returning to shore, he sat himself upright and reached down to his pants leg, thinking he could tear off some of his flight suit to use as a crude rope. But the flight suit was too strong to rip, so he had to resort to his knife, poking it gently against his calf and auguring a hole.

His lower leg had turned deep purple, covered almost completely by bruises.

The color shocked him. He couldn’t feel anything there, but thought his legs must have been badly damaged in the crash. Deciding they needed whatever protection they could get, he pushed the pant leg down and instead undid the top portion of his flight suit so he could use his T-shirt. This was easy to rip, and he soon had the sticks tied to his wrist.

Swimming on his back, he had no trouble at first; the heavy eastward current was mitigated by a long length of stone that
jutted from the atoll and formed a protective arm. But as he tried to turn toward the west beach where he’d left Breanna, he found the current hard to fight. Within seconds he was being pushed away from the island. Turning over, he began swimming with all his strength, pushing through the swells as they beat rhythmically against his face. He managed to push himself back to the edge of the island, clinging to a rock until he recovered enough strength to pull himself up onto shore.

By now the sun had set. In the fading twilight, he dragged himself up the hill, trailing the wood behind him. He’d gotten no farther than halfway before it was pitch-black and he could barely see in front him. But he wasn’t about to stop. He felt his way forward, pushing up slowly and trying to be gentle on his legs.

It seemed to take hours before he found himself moving downhill. The sticks made a scratching sound that was almost funny, or at least struck him that way.

Tchchhhh, tchchhh, tchchhh
—a witch’s broomstick dragging along the ground because she was afraid of heights.

Tchchhhh, tchchhh, tchchhh
—the Jolly Green Giant, ripping his pants as he walked.

Tchchhhh, tchchhh, tchchhh
—the sound seemed outrageously funny, and he began to laugh. He was still laughing when he reached the rocky part of the atoll, where the shadows made it almost impossible to see where the tent was. He stared at the darkness, hoping to find some hint of the spot before pushing down. Thinking he finally spotted it, he set out, only to reach the water ten minutes later. He dragged himself back up in a diagonal without any better luck.

“Bree!” he called before starting a third pass. “Bree—hey, babe, where’s our tent?”

There was no answer. Though he hadn’t expected one, he felt disappointed.

“Bree? Bree!”

Nothing.

Zen resumed his crawl. The sticks tumbled and occasion
ally snagged alongside him. They were no longer amusing, and he even thought of letting them go. But he kept dragging them, and finally found the pile of rocks he had set at one edge of their shelter.